On ‘Dooring’ of Bicyclists, and Experts’ Fees

And in a city where the tension between two- and four-wheeled transportation devices can sometimes seem as shrill as the sound of squeaky brakes, accounts of collisions between bicyclists and drivers are passed around on blogs, in newspapers and among members of various cycling clubs and organizations.

One compilation of episodes in which drivers opened the doors of their parked vehicles into the path of oncoming cyclists can be found on BicycleSafe.com and includes details of cases from places as diverse as India, Canada, Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco.

Among the harrowing accounts is one about Dana Laird, 36, a “doctoral student at the Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts,” who was killed in 2002 as she rode along Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Mass.

It said: “A motorist opened the door of a parked sport utility vehicle across the bike lane in which Ms. Laird was traveling. Ms. Laird swerved and lost control. According to eyewitness accounts, she yelled, `flew through the air,’ and apparently struck the door. She went under the right rear wheels of a passing transit bus, and she was killed instantly.”

Such collisions are not foreign in New York City — and they can lead to occasional charges being lodged by the police or prosecutors, depending on the circumstances.

In a crash on Atlantic and Washington Avenues in Brooklyn on Sept. 11, a driver opened her car door into the path of Jasmine Herron, who was bicycling by, sending her into an oncoming bus that struck and killed her, officials said. Among the charges filed against the driver, Krystal Francis, was “opening and closing vehicle doors,” a violation of Section 1214 of the State Vehicle and Traffic Law, according to a criminal complaint from the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.

The charge popped up again, this time phrased as “unsafely exiting a vehicle,” in a crash in East Harlem on Friday. In that case, the driver of a 2008 Honda was issued with a summons for “unsafely exiting a vehicle” for opening his car door and causing a bicyclist to fall into the path of an oncoming truck, which killed him, the police said.

The Honda driver, who was not identified by name, was in his parked car and opened his door as the rider, Marcus Ewing, 27, was pedaling his Cannondale bicycle eastbound on East 120th Street, just west of Third Avenue, about 8 a.m., the police said.

The driver of the truck that hit Mr. Ewing was issued five summonses, for equipment violations.

As for the driver whose door knocked over Mr. Ewing, the charge he faces — unsafely exiting a vehicle — “is a V.T.L. traffic summons” (Vehicle and Traffic Law) and not one found in the New York State penal code, according to one city official.

Another official said such citations were aimed at preventing drivers from opening their car doors into traffic in ways that would create “dangerous conditions for bicyclists or motorists” coming by at the same time.

“You cannot just swing your car door open,” the official said.

“It is not that often that officers issue those kinds of tickets,” the official said. And sometimes, it requires a patrol officer to witness the offending behavior for it to rise to a summons, or an inquiry by the Accident Investigation Squad when a death is involved. Then, that sole charge can carry similar penalties to other traffic violations, like going through a red light, the official said.

Whether termed “unsafely exiting a vehicle” or something else, Nick Cantiello, a spokesman for the State Department of Motor Vehicles, sent along a copy of Section 1214 of the State Vehicle and Traffic Law. It said:

Opening and closing vehicle doors. No person shall open the door of a motor vehicle on the side available to moving traffic unless and until it is reasonably safe to do so, and can be done without interfering with the movement of other traffic, nor shall any person leave a door open on the side of a vehicle available to moving traffic for a period of time longer than necessary to load or unload passengers.

Mr. Cantiello said the fine for the violation could be as much as $150. Asked about the number of “doorings” — in which people open a door into a bike or a car — he said that as of Oct. 22, there had been 147 tickets issued for that offense around the state.

In all of 2009, he said, there were 179; in all of 2008 there were 207; and in 2007 there were 164.

“So it’s not a lot,” he said. “You can see there’s not a real trend there.”

A spokesman for the New York Police Department said the department did not keep statistics on such incidents around the five boroughs.

Noah S. Budnick, the deputy director of Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit pedestrian and bicycle transportation group financed by members, said the issue of cyclists being hit by doors had long been a concern.

“It’s always been a top complaint and, anecdotally, a major contributing factor to crashes in New York City,” he said. “If you talk to anyone who’s ridden a bike in New York, everyone has a story about, at best, narrowly avoiding a car door that’s been swung open in their path and bike riders quickly learn that one of the safest ways to ride is to take the whole lane, so they are not biking in the door zone.”

Of Fees for Experts

There it was in black and white on Page 103 of a new study critiquing the Police Department’s controversial stop-question-and-frisk policy: the hourly rate a Columbia Law Professor received for his work.

“I have been compensated for this work at the rate of $350 per hour,” the professor, Jeffrey A. Fagan, wrote. There was no total, but one can imagine it was high, as he spent 15 months over three years on the project.

He even scribbled in the date, as another contemporaneous bit of evidence: Oct. 15, 2010.

The study — for the Center for Constitutional Rights — found that in more than 30 percent of the street stops, officers either lacked the kind of suspicion necessary to make a stop constitutional or did not include enough data on the stop to determine whether it was legally justified.

Eleven days later, when Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly was asked for his response, he took the occasion to point out that Professor Fagan was paid well. (Still, he overinflated the price a bit, asserting that the professor was paid $375 an hour.)

“This is a document prepared for plaintiffs who paid that sort of money to have this document prepared,” Mr. Kelly said. “When you pay that sort of money, you’re going to get a view point that pretty much goes along with your view point.”

“I wouldn’t take the position that this is an objective document,” he said.

But wait. Mr. Kelly acknowledged that the city was paying its own expert, Dennis C. Smith, a professor at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service of New York University, to write its own study. He said Professor Fagan “had three years to develop” his study, while the city had “30 days to respond.” His point: It will cost less money.

Questions about Professor Smith’s fee hung in the air: At what hourly rate was he being paid? Over what time? And by whom?

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, responded in an e-mail: “unknown at this hour — but not $375 an hour for three years.” In another e-mail, on Wednesday, he said Professor Smith was not paid by the Police Department and referred questions to the city’s Law Department, which did not immediately respond to questions.

Professor Fagan, in this current effort, has been paid for about 15 months’ worth of work, according to people familiar with the arrangement. But he has done research, and published on the subject, for more than a decade. Before beginning on his work on the current study, he worked for the City Council under a contract to Columbia University, with the payments going to the school. It was the same arrangement when he worked for the state attorney general’s office under a contract to Columbia as part of that office’s 1999 study of the issue.

Some critics and law enforcement analysts raised the same sort of questions when the Police Department — through the Police Foundation — commissioned the nonprofit Rand Corporation in early 2007 for an independent study of the stop-and-frisk issue.

The department was under fire because the increasing number of street stops were leading some critics to suggest that minorities were unfairly singled out, a charge that the police have repeatedly denied. The Rand study (pdf), in November 2007, found no racial profiling being done by police officers in New York.

At the time, the study was said to cost in the six figures — and at least $120,000 — a bill footed by the foundation, a charity that supports the department. The police on Wednesday reiterated that figure.

Al Baker, police bureau chief for The New York Times — and the son of a police lieutenant — brings you inside the nation’s largest police force every Thursday. He will occasionally be joined by other reporters for The Times; this week, Ray Rivera and Karen Zraick contributed. Mr. Baker can be reached at OnePolicePlaza@nytimes.com.

So, now that Fagan has been discredited, does that mean the study has no value? Kelly seems to imply that Fagan is a liar, almost a paid for witness who lies for money. Are there other instances of Fagan taking money like this for an opinion?

I was almost doored twice last Saturday. The key word here is almost. Because I was going slowly enough in the bike lane that I was able to slam on the brakes and stop in time. Every time I see a taxi 20 to 30 feet in front of me, I try visualize preventing my death. Fact is, I’m the only person who can prevent my getting killed by a door being flung open. Because a taxi passenger is not thinking of a bicyclist. The passenger is thinking: “I want to get out of this taxi as fast as possible.” Sure, I sometimes hear nice apologies and not-so-nice-apologies and startled expressions like “Ohmygosh!” and “Whoops, sorry!” And sometimes I hear nothing, because I wasn’t hit and I didn’t get hurt. The fact is, I’m not dead yet because I’m not speeding, and I’m looking out for every door that might open in my path. Seeing these doors fly open gives me a daily reminder that biking at a reasonable speed is the best way to prevent my own accidental death.

In Massachusetts opening a door into the path of a bicyclist is now, thankfully, illegal. Police are gaining sensitivity to this violation (which, for the record, is M.G.L. c. 90, Sec. 14).

If every driver of a motor vehicle spent 1/2 hour each year riding their bicycle in traffic, I am sure they would become extremely sensitive to the dangers involved when moving bicycles meet other vehicles, whether they are stopped or moving.

The fact that committing a traffic infraction that leads to the death of another legal occupant of the roadway is processed as a minor infraction carrying a penalty of $150 or less is a major reason why motorists are so fatally oblivious of bicyclists: Motorists kill bicyclists because there are no serious consequences for doing so. If a moving infraction inadvertently leads to the death of another motorist, charges are normally much more severe and could include manslaughter, which is to a large extent why motorists do not do things that routinely endanger the lives of other motorists. Until the law uniformly respects bicyclist as what they in fact legally are: people who have just as much right to occupy the roadways as motorists do, motorists will continue to blithely engage in activities that endanger bicyclist’s lives, leading to more deaths like the ones (rather callously) enumerated in this article. If penalties for endangering the lives of bicyclists reflected a general concern for their lives and for their right to occupy the roadways—if they were, for example, thousands rather than hundreds of dollars—motorists might just cast a glance over their shoulders before doling out the “door prize.”

Good drivers know how to anticipate other road users making mistakes, and to take evasive actions BEFORE accidents happen.
For example, when you are on a highway and see the guy in the next lane following REALLY close to the car in the front, you should know he’s going to cut into YOUR lane, without signaling, of course.
Likewise, when you see a bike messenger approaching the intersection where you as the driver has the green light, YOU should know he’s going to blast right through the intersection, while screaming obscenities at pedestrians who happen to be in his way.
It is upon cyclists to anticipate drivers or passengers opening their doors and avoid being doored. If you see someone in the car moving around, you should foresee the possibility of being doored and take precautions accordingly.
Even if not at fault, drivers can be charged if they could have avoided the accident. Expecting ALL road users to do the same is perfectly reasonable.
This is not called blaming the victim. It’s called defensive riding.

I’m sure the number of cyclists getting “doored” is under reported. I was doored by a taxi on CPW last month, no major injuries. I called 911 to file an accident report, waited with the taxi driver at the accident scene for 1/2 hour, but no Police arrived.

There is also a separate NYC law against opening car doors into traffic, besides the NYS V&T law. It says essentially the same thing, but is disappointing that no one either knows about it or bothered to include it in the discussion above.

I guess it’s not very important to the police or the courts, only to the cyclists who are injured and killed and their friends and family. Back to business as usual.

I rollerblade rather than bike, but I’ve been doored several times, not to mention being hit full-on by cars a few times too. The most spectacular dooring was a door that opened when I was about a foot away from it, travelling at around 15 to 20 mph (about my top speed). I managed to twist most of my body out of line, but my right shoulder hit the edge of the door, spinning me around and sending me sliding a few car lengths. Got home to find that all along my shoulder, blood was seeping through the skin where the door hit, which the ER doc later said was merely a bad contusion (worst contusion of my life too). Left a cool looking scar too.

Anyway, I’ve got some advice for bikers keen to avoid getting doored. Whenever you’re passing a line of parked cars, when you get close to a car (before reaching the rear bumper, say), check if anyone’s in it. If there is, on the same side of the car you’re passing, keep an eye on the side view mirror or the rear door if they’re in the backseat, as you pass. Often I’ve avoided getting doored just by catching the movement of that mirror in time.

Furthermore, whenever a cab stops, treat it as an extreme hazard. Either someone is going to step up to it to get in, without looking out for you, or someone is going to toss that door open, without a glance outside. Cab riders are the worst for dooring, in my experience, so when a cab stops ahead of me I tend to stop too, then pass it slowly and cautiously.

So take care out there, and use bike lanes whenever possible, as they reduce the odds of someone flinging open a door blindly (they usually know they’re next to a bike lane and will look first).

Noah Budnick said “…bike riders quickly learn that one of the safest ways to ride is to take the whole lane, so they are not biking in the door zone.”

This brings us to the other half of the problem, being hit by the car or bus or truck overtaking the cyclist. If there was more room between the cyclist and the passing vehicle, there is a much better chance the cyclist will fall on clear ground and not under the wheels of the bus. There is a need for overtaking drivers to pass safely with enough space, more than 3 feet away.

One of the difficulties of riding a bike outside the door zone is that overtaking drivers think you are improperly blocking “their” lane. The state and city bicycle laws state that cyclists are only to ride as close to the side of the road AS IS SAFE, and no closer. Riding in the door zone is not safe, it’s a crash waiting to happen.

There needs to be tolerance to sharing the road by overtaking motorists. They need to move over to the next lane if possible, or slow down and wait for clear space to overtake if necessary. The bicycle is slower traffic, properly riding as near to the side of the road as is safe. The drivers need to do their part and no harass cyclist into moving into the door zone, or “buzz” them too close, or blow their horns to intimidate them.

There are very clear laws about how to overtake another vehicle safely, it would be nice if motorists would follow those laws.

I can only imagine that even the most cavalier of door openers look before actually getting out of the vehicle; it’s difficult for me to understand the idea of not looking before opening the door, too.

As such, I’d lay a fairly heavy wager that a lot of these incidents are happening because the bicycles happen to be in the sideview blind spot at just the wrong moment. Even a conscientious driver wouldn’t spot them, bikes aren’t loud enough to be heard over traffic, and it would explain why the bikers might not have time to safely evade—the door would swing open right as the bike passed the rear bumper.

I’m sure some of the incidents are drivers being irresponsible, of course, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a majority were just simple bad luck.

In 1999, the advocacy group Right Of Way, which I helped co-ordinate, obtained police accident reports for 71 fatal bicycle crashes in NYC during the four-year period 1995-1998. Setting aside 18 crashes for which information was badly incomplete, we analyzed 53 cases for causation. Three of these fatalities were due to dooring.

We wrote in our report: “While the proximate cause of these fatalities is the door opening into the path of the cyclist (a moving violation under §1214 of the vehicle and traffic law), the root cause is bullying by drivers that forces cyclists to surrender their lawful place in a “traffic” lane and consigns them to the “door zone” instead.”

I’ve been hit by bikes on more than one occasion while crossing in the crosswalk with the light in my favor. The worst was by a cyclist who blew through the red light going the wrong way down a one way street. I suffered a broken wrist. Unlike cars, cyclists aren’t required to have insurance. The cost of medical treatment came out of my own pocket. The guy refused to give his name and address and just rode off.

The blatant disregard for the law and wellbeing of pedestrians even extends the city’s green spaces. Things are just as bad in Central Park. Cyclists refuse to stop for the red light at the crosswalk near Dipway Arch – a route I walk home every night.

As a daily bicycle commuter, the possibility of the door of the parked car — or the taxi stopped at a light — that I’m about to pass swinging open focuses my attention like almost nothing else. It’s a huge source of stress.

I got doored once, about 20 years ago, on 8th Ave. I came away from that with a bruised thigh. The big fear, of course, is getting knocked into the path of a car or a truck racing by a my elbow. Scary.

My solution: cycle very defensively.

Frankly, I wince at the sight of fellow cyclers racing through the narrow paths between parked cars and moving vehicles — especially oversize trucks — as if they can’t imagine one of those doors suddenly opening. And it only takes one.

I wonder if anything could be done to encourage cab drivers — at least — to warn their fares to look before exiting.

While I do not condone careless door opening, I submit that it will always exist. People aren’t perfect. Bicyclists have a sure-fire remedy: Don’t ride in the door zone. Then you are immune from doorings, which have emerged as a leading cause of non-fatal accidents (as a study from Toronto shows) and a significant cause of fatal accidents.
Unfortunately, when the city paints door zone bike lanes and then passes laws requiring cyclists to ride in bike lanes, the cyclist’s remedy becomes illegal. Without the bike lane, the cyclist has the right to the whole darn road. With the bike lane, the cyclist is told to use the most dangerous part of the road!
Given all this, I have a huge problem with door zone bike lanes.
— John Schubert, Limeport.org

Tim @ 4: Your logic (and sense of self-righteousness) are painfully flawed. Some jerks in the past apparently wronged you (I’m not defending their actions and will take your claims of their jerkfulness as truthful, what you described was not proper behavior), and that somehow justifies harming people who are completely unrelated to the jerks you encountered?

Two wrongs don’t make a right, etc etc.

I’m sorry friend, but the logic in your above screed is wretchedly flawed, as are your views of karma and ethics.

And yes, non-drivers are by far the worst when it comes to swinging the door open without checking.

I almost lost a door on my (at that time) brand-new Mercedes when a friend threw the door wide open, into traffic. The passing truck couldn’t have missed it by more than a few inches. She did not (and still does not) have a driver’s license.

@David Talk about flawed logic. Do you have proof of any “doored” cyclist who hasn’t wilfully violated the rules of the road and put pedestrians in harms way? Recently there was a study on how rampant problem cyclists are.

– About 13 percent of cyclists (and a quarter of cyclists under the age of 14) were observed riding against traffic.

– Almost 13 percent of cyclists (and more than half of cyclists under the age of 14) were observed riding on sidewalks.

– Nearly 14 percent of cyclists did not use a designated bike lane when one was available.

– Only 36 percent of cyclists wore helmets. About half of female riders wore helmets, compared with just about one-third of the males.

– Nearly half of the children under the age of 14, and nearly three-quarters of commercial cyclists — like messengers and delivery workers — did not wear a helmet, even though the law requires that both groups use helmets.

I venture to say if 57% of motorists “doored” cyclists the biking community would be up in arms. Most cases of “dooring” are not willful or deliberate. The cycling community’s behavior cited by the stats above are.

I’ve measured a lot of bike lanes since watching this. Sadly, most of them are clear in the door zone. My general practice is to ride towards the left side of the bike lane so I’m mostly outside the door zone. Additionally, I’ll go into the traffic lane whenever I pass a car which just parked, or which has its lights on ( with the possibility the driver may exit ).

The alternatives to riding in the door zone are lane splitting ( video demonstration: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs4ZqIlur0c ) and just taking the traffic lane. Truth is I don’t feel very comfortable with either of these practices. Lane splitting only works on multilane roads with very slow or stopped traffic, and there’s still a remote possibility of getting doored. As for riding in the traffic lane, I’m only comfortable doing so if there’s no traffic, or if the traffic is moving at a speed I can match ( generally 25 mph or less, unless I’m behind a bus or truck, in which case slipstreaming the large vehicle lets me go MUCH faster ).

What it comes down to is cycling on roads without protected bike lanes in NYC is inherently hazardous no matter what you do. Defensively cycling can avoid most of the problems. Ironically, some roads are actually safer when they’re busy. When traffic is light, it will move too fast to take the traffic lane. The only alternative is the door zone. When traffic is heavy, it will frequently slow down to cycling speeds. Strange but true. The best alternative, if your schedule allows, is riding during times when traffic is practically nonexistant ( after about 9 or 10 PM ). This is mostly what I do.

How about a little more reporting, Mr. Baker?
If a driver is speeding or runs a red light, they’re subject to a traffic violation and a modest fine. If they run over a pedestrian and kill him or her while speeding or running the light, they can, and usually do, face more serious charges, up to and including criminal charges.
These drivers *killed* two cyclists. Why weren’t they cited for a more serious violation (in addition to “unsafe exiting”) that could result in a loss of license or even jail time? And for that matter, why did you print the name of the victim, but not the perpetrator in these cases?
With two deaths within five weeks, this is a serious problem, despite Mr. Cantiello’s contention otherwise (and your tacit agreement). A $150 fine for causing a death is neither just, nor a deterrent. This sort of casual, knee-jerk reporting just makes light of a dire situation.
Why don’t you ride to work next Monday? A close encounter with the door of a Ford Explorer while jostling with a cross town bus might change your perspective.

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